Pay, productivity and inequality

The chart shows the basic economic problem of the USA, and of other advanced countries as well.

Economic productivity continues to increase, but wages do not.

Economists Lawrence Mishel and David Ruccio reported recently on how pundits and economists have tried to explain it away, by re-defining employee compensation, re-defining productivity and re-defining the cost of living.

But, as Mishel and Ruccio both pointed out, none of the pundits were able to explain away the real cause of the problem—that the benefits of increase productivity are being siphoned off by the owners of financial assets and the upper-income brackets..